Kirilenko next for Ana

Ana will face Russian Maria Kirilenko in the second round of the Toray Pan Pacific Open after brushing aside home favourite Ai Sugiyama 6-3, 6-0 yesterday.

It will be the third time that Ana has faced Kirilenko. Ana holds a 2-0 advantage in career meetings: she beat the 19-year-old 6-1, 6-1 in the second round of last year's Australian Open and triumphed 7-5, 6-1 in qualifying for the Dubai Duty Free Women’s Open a month later.

Ana has been seeing a lot of world No.23 Kirilenko recently: they are playing doubles together this week and today beat the formidable pairing of Elena Dementieva and Corina Morariu 6-3, 4-6, 6-2. They also faced faced each other in the mixed doubles competition in Melbourne two weeks ago, a match that Ana and Novak Djokovic won on a Super Tiebreak.

The match is scheduled to take place tomorrow (Thursday) at 11am local time (4am Central European Time) on the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium's main court.

Ana and Kirilenko will then play their Second Round doubles match in the afternoon (3rd match) on Court 2. They play Angelique Widjaja and local favourite and Australian Open women's doubles champion Jie Zheng.